2000 Zimbabweans flee SA violence

More than 2,000 Zimbabwean farm workers have fled informal settlements in the southern city of Cape Town as violent xenophobic attacks erupted against foreign nationals in South Africa again, APA learnt here Wednesday.

South African police said around 2,500 Zimbabwean migrants Tuesday took refuge in government buildings in De Doorns, a farming town 140 km from Cape Town, after some of their shacks in an informal settlement were attacked and demolished.

All the displaced Zimbabweans are documented workers.

The police said tensions had been building since last week as the locals accused the foreigners from Zimbabwe as well as some Lesotho nationals of accepting lower wages than those demanded by the locals, thereby robbing the natives of seasonal jobs on farms.

On Tuesday morning, local residents prevented foreigners from climbing onto the trucks of farmers coming into the town to pick up the workers for the day’s work.

Local residents are apparently unhappy that farm owners had been employing Zimbabweans for less money, complaining that the mainly white farmers were “excluding the local community” because they did not want to pay them the 70 to 80 rand (US$1=R8) per day the locals demand from the employers.

The Zimbabweans are said to accept about half of this amount. The farmers deny this.

Apart from the violent attacks, the South Africans also demolished a number of shacks rented by the foreigners before police intervened to save the situation from getting uglier.

The attacks invoked memories of the May 2008 xenophobic attacks that left more than 150 African immigrants dead in and around the country.

Rampaging mobs of South African men armed with machetes, axes, spears and guns last year attacked and killed African immigrants, looting their property in an unprecedented two-week wave of xenophobic violence that shocked the nation, which prides itself as being among the most tolerant societies in the world. African Press Agency